THE GMB trade union yesterday called on workers being cheated of the national minimum wage to contact their local GMB office to enforce their rights.
This was at the same time as the union called on the Virgin Media contractor to pull back from paying below the National Minimum Wage.
Paul Kenny, GMB General Secretary yesterday gave the following response to the announcement of the National Minimum Wage rate rise from 1st October 2007.
He said: ‘Over 1.3 million workers who are on the National Minimum Wage in the UK will get an extra 17 pence per hour from 1st October this year taking the new hourly rate for adults to £5.52.
‘This increase is welcome. However, the figure of £5.52 is still well short of half of the UK average hourly rate for full time workers.
‘The GMB is increasingly concerned about enforcement of the National Minimum Wage.
‘Workers who are not currently receiving £5.35 per hour should contact their local GMB office for help to get their rights.
‘GMB is currently in dispute with the Virgin Media TV installation contractor Cobra which has given notice that they will introduce a rate of pay of £4.44 per hour, which is below the national minimum wage, on days when their workers are not busy at 16 depots across England.
‘Yesterday Cobra promised to end the practice of sending workers home without pay on days they are not busy and has promised to pay back pay for past days when this happened.
‘However, the GMB has not ruled out strike action or legal redress if the Virgin Media contractor does not back down on introducing the £4.40 hourly rate.’
Cobra staff are employed at 16 bases in the following locations: Carlisle; Durham; Leeds; Blackburn; Whitefields; Manchester; Oldham; Stockport; Warrington; Bristol; Eastleigh; Southampton; Portsmouth; Brighton; Guildford; Epsom and Ashford, Kent.
They visit 30,000 households per week.
Their workwear bears the Virgin Media logo. Cobra’s three Scottish depots at Aberdeen, Glasgow and Dunfermline do not work for Virgin Media and are not part of the dispute.
Meanwhile, the TGWU has warned of the great dangers emerging as far as the jobs of air industry workers are concerned.
The union warned yesterday: ‘If the current plans for an open skies deal between Europe and America are agreed they will start a race to the bottom for aviation workers as well as the possibility of many thousands of jobs being lost.’
The Transport and General Workers Union, which has over 70,000 members involved directly and indirectly in civil aviation and associated industries in the UK, said the proposed deal seemed to have little material difference to those which Europe rejected in June 2004 and November 2005 as they were biased in favour of the USA.
The current deal, it added, did little for aviation in the UK, let alone the fortunes of any company.
‘If this pro-American deal is endorsed by European transport ministers it will signal a real backward step for the aviation industry in the UK,’ said Brendan Gold, TGWU national secretary for civil air transport.
‘Europe will simply open the door to the American airlines but the door remains closed to Europe in the USA. That’s not a deal which takes UK aviation forward.’
Gold urged UK Transport minister Douglas Alexander, to vote against the deal on 22nd March if the plans were not substantially changed.
If the deal goes through as it is now, he said there were real fears that in the new market situation the workforce would be squeezed as cost-cutting would be intensified to meet ever lower price expectations from passengers.
‘The T&G is determined to fight for our members interests’, he concluded.
